Writing up a storm to weather this hangover

So after a two-week moratorium, I drank---a lot---again last night at Magnet (and at Tribu, AND at the Meatshop). With Sigh, Marie, Mikael, Joel, Peachy, Pancho, Daryll, Mookie, Gelo, Ken, Ricci, and others I forget now. The City Poetry Reading was the best I'd been to in a while, much better than any of the Conspiracy readings. Lovely audience, energetic readers, the 3 people I wanted to ask recommendation letters from were there...panalo. Got home at 5 am, slept at 6, woke up at 9:30 to haul most of my stuff away from the department cubicle. I have a late(!) article that needs writing, a headache, and a bad attack of nostalgia.

So, a poem:

Drinking Song
Silvia Curbelo

In every half-filled glass a river
begging to be named, rain on a leaf,
a snowdrift. What we long for

precedes us. What we've lost
trails behind, casting
a long shadow. Tonight

the music's sad, one man's
outrageous loneliness detonated
into arpeggios of relief. The way

someone once cupped someone's
face in their hands, and the world
that comes after. Everything

can be pared down to gravity
or need. If the soul soars with longing
the heart plunges headfirst

into what's left, believing
there's a pure want
to fall through. What we drink to

in the end is loss, the space
around it, the opposite
of thirst, its shadow.